Marshall tightened his grip on Norah’s hand. Felt Landon shift at his shoulder, drawing a breath that sounded like a man settling into the only choice left.
Marshall pulled in a controlled breath. Then he raised his comm.
“Stephen. I need help.”
A beat, then Stephen answered—quiet, tight. “I hear you.”
“They’ve boxed the loading dock. I need a way through.”
Another beat. Barely half a second, but Marshall could feel the kid’s hesitation like a taut wire over the line.
“I can trigger a fire-suppression dump,” Stephen said. “Zone C only. It won’t hurt you, but visibility will tank for thirty seconds.”
Thirty seconds.
Marshall didn’t hesitate. “Do it.”
“Triggering on your go.”
Marshall lowered the comm. Turned to Norah.
He had maybe ten seconds before the men behind them hit this stretch of hallway. Fifteen before someone thought to check this door.
His hand cupped the side of Norah’s face, thumb brushing over the pulse in her throat. It slammed against his skin, frantic.
“Marshall,” she breathed. Her eyes glistened, lashes spiked. “Don’t you dare say goodbye.”
He should have listened.
He didn’t.
He bent, fast and sudden, and she rose to meet him.
Her mouth collided with his, hard and fierce and shaking. It tasted like salt and fear and fifteen years of unsaid things. Her hands fisted in his shirt, pulling him closer, as though she could anchor him there by sheer will.
For a second, everything inside him stopped fighting. The noise, the pain, the calculations—they all fell away. There was only the reality of her, pressed against him in a service corridor that smelled like bleach and gun oil.
His heart hammered against his ribs so hard it hurt.
Then someone shouted at the far end of the hallway and the spell shattered.
She broke the kiss, breathless.
He stepped back, every cell in his body screaming at the distance. He slid his hand down until their fingers tangled again.
“We’re going to have to run. Hard. No stopping, no second-guessing. You stay on my six and you do not let go.”
He turned his head, just enough to see Norah’s profile. The smear of lipstick at the corner of her mouth where he’d kissed her. The tremor in her jaw as she fought to hold it together.
He owed her the truth, at least once in his life.
“Norah,” he said quietly.
She looked at him.
For a moment, the world narrowed to the space between their eyes.
“Whatever happens,” he said, voice roughened and low, “I love you. And I’m getting you out.”
